Not only do we have to squeeze our brains to eke out our imaginative juices, but to scribble them intelligibly in a format publishers accept. However, each group of publishers have their own formatting guidelines. Not that that should be a huge problem, should it? There are websites saying they have ‘standard manuscript format guidelines’. All different! Because I’m in the UK and go to writing conventions and workshops here, I discover that recent practice is not to indent the first line of sections and chapters. Submit your ouevre to a US agent or publisher and many want it done with indents. US or UK publishers seem easy over American or British spellings – a good copyedit can sort that later if necessary. But at the threat of having your submission automatically rejected unread, the onus is on the poor writer to reformat their novels according not only to which country they are being sent to, but which publishing group or agency. For my Left Luggage, I now have four different versions – all mostly the same words but in different submission formats! Then every time I make a small or large revision – all four versions have to be worked on. Ho hum.
